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Spyware Doctor didn't run well on my computer

If you're looking for a spyware program, you may have seen that Spyware Doctor has received PC Mag's editors choice. I installed it on my computer and had all kinds of performance problems such as 100% CPU usage by Spyware Doctor, Internet Explorer failing to close when I clicked to close it, and some sites (Yahoo mail for example) running slow or not at all. Granted my computer is 5 years old, but it runs Windows 2000 and all my other programs without a problem. So for now I've gone back to Microsoft Anti-Spyware with which I've had no performance problems.

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With certain other programs-- in particular it will not work well with Prevx (learned this the hard way, posted on the Prevx support Forum at Castle Cops and discovered it was a known issue).

My computer is a bit more moedern than yours (!.8 gig processor running XP) and it could not handle SD and Prevx together. But, even super-charged pcs I discovered had the same problem. They conflict. Spyware Doctor is no longer loaded in resident memory for me (I use Spyware Blaster and Spyware Guard in addition to Prevx) and I just use SD to scan out baddies (course, I don't get many of those, using all that prvenention and FireFox as my primary browser!).

For some of the same reasons. In addition it supposedly found 3 CometCurser's relating to the mouse and 33 Xupiter's having to do with adds IE Toolbar w/links to Xupiter. Software could not remove them and it recommended upgrading to the paid version to delete them. Well... that's no good and I'm not sure they are really there as no other cleaners find them and I use all the usual ones recommended on these forums plus some others.

If you read tha Spywareinfo Newsletter linked by Roddy, the thing that most impressed the reviewer is that Spyware Doctor produced no false positives, and was the only spyware scanner the reviewer ever saw that never had done so.

I have downloaded virtually every legit (and, unknowingly, a couple of rogues) spyware scanner created and always a free trial of a paid version found "something". But, I will say (and have long ago here), I think Spyware Doctor does a far more thorough scan than it's competitors and tend to think it's results the most legitimate.

It's scans take FOREVER and it scans deep, finding remnants of left-behind junk other scanners might be missing. I wouldn't quickly dismiss the results as come-ons or false positives.

Or, they might be. But, my long experience with the program is it truly is the best I've used (even if I can't use its resident shield).

Thank you for the well thought out and courteous response. I have to tell you that my decision was not entirely made on the come-on or false positive issue. I had other problems where it did not play well with other software and slowed it down my system.

I still have the downloaded file and may give it another try when there is more time to isolate the conflicts with other software. I have no problem with purchasing the full version if I know it will work without conflicts.

Thanks for your perspective and I really do appreciate responses that are well thought out.

MS Antispyware was just as nasty if not worse than Spyware Doctor on my machine.

MS Antispyware found alot of trash that other programs did not find but I had to disable the Real Time Protection as it greatly slowed my machine. And after disabling the Real Time Protection I found the machine was much faster, appearantly as a result of the trash removed by MS Antispyware.